(Editor’s note: This is another in a series of stories looking at the origins of the school colors and nicknames of several area high schools).
One of the more unusual high school nicknames found anywhere is the Bruisers name associated with Girls Preparatory School. In fact, an outsider might find such a nickname more appropriate for an expansion pro football or hockey team, or maybe even a boxing club.
Instead, it is the nickname of a Chattanooga independent all-girls school that has long prided itself on academic excellence and social integrity – but an institution that has also won quite a few state athletic championships along the way.
“I didn’t particularly like it,” joked retired athletic director, teacher and coach Peggy Thomas of the name. “I didn’t think it was very feminine. But it stuck and now it’s OK.”
In comparison, Harpeth Hall School in Nashville – another all-girls independent school – has a much more feminine name – the Honey Bears, although it apparently often calls itself the Bears for short. Hutchison School in Memphis, meanwhile, is more in line with GPS in calling itself the Sting.
According to Patrice H. Glass, an alumna who wrote a history of GPS for its centennial in 2006, the local nickname was born in the late 1960s. Paul Bode, the school’s first male headmaster, had suggested it to play off the school colors of black and blue.
A person bruised in a fight or accident is often described as having black and blue marks, so Mr. Bode thought it was an ideal name.
An official student vote was taken on the nickname in 1976 after Nat Hughes arrived as headmaster, and the students upheld the Bruiser name in what was described as light voting. A Bruiser student mascot was adopted in 1983.
GPS Director of Communications Anne Exum said ESPN did a feature on unusual nicknames in the 1990s and mentioned the GPS Bruisers.
Mrs. Glass said GPS also had a previous nickname that did not stick quite as long. As World War II was getting underway, the school helped raise $300,000 in war bonds for the American effort.
“With that money, the military purchased Jeeps,” Mrs. Glass said. “And the government recognized the school in 1942.”
As fate would dictate, the project gave the school a way to recognize itself as well. Some sharp person or persons realized the school initials sounded like Jeeps, so the school sometimes called itself Geeps for a period.
“But it was never officially adopted,” Mrs. Glass said.
Exactly why the school colors of black and blue were adopted is a little more of a mystery, but Mrs. Glass said English teacher Chloe Thompson is credited with picking them during the first year of school.
For years the colors were light blue and black, but in recent years a more standard royal blue and black have been used. Whether the stronger blue color was changed to be more in line with McCallie after the two schools entered into a more coordinated program in 1985 could not be uncovered.
Even though women’s and girls’ roles have changed greatly since the school started in 1906, GPS has always been a strong advocate of athletics. It had exercise programs at the YWCA and walking excursions during its first year.
And, as Mrs. Glass writes, during the fall of its second year, GPS had a basketball team that defeated – that’s right – Baylor at the YWCA at a time when Baylor was also coed before becoming all male for about 75 years.
Mrs. Thomas said that when she arrived at GPS in 1953 after having helped start a volleyball program at the University of Chattanooga with Jean Jacobs, basketball and volleyball were the only sports offered competitively during her early years, and the school had to play basketball regularly against teams from Atlanta and Memphis.
“But we had a wonderful intramural program,” she said.
As competitive women’s sports later became more common, other sports were added, including golf, a sport in which the school won two early state championships in the 1970s under coach and teacher Virginia Thurston.
Mrs. Thomas, meanwhile, contributed to the development of girls’ athletics statewide as well as at GPS. She was on a TSSAA committee that was looking at changing girls’ basketball from the antiquated 3-on-3 half-court style that kept players on each side of the court, to five-man teams using the entire court.
“I was the only woman at the meeting,” she recalled. “I told them that, yes, I thought women were perfectly capable of playing five-man basketball.”
The measure passed in the 1970s with the endorsement of another woman, a young University of Tennessee coach named Pat Head, later Pat Head Summitt.
Besides an unusual nickname and a long history of competitive athletics, GPS also probably has more unique traditions than about any other school in town. These include the May Day celebration, the distinctive school uniforms dating to 1924, the creative class ring presentation ceremony, the Cat-Rat activities for seniors and sixth-graders, and the Robin Hood fund-raising charity program.
Like the colors and even the nickname, the traditions are embraced and cherished by GPS students and alumnae.
Jcshearer2@comcast.net